ITNS supports #WorldKidneyDay and efforts to raise #awareness of kidney disease! #WorldKidneyDay promotes affordable and equitable access to health education, healthcare and prevention for kidney diseases for all women and girls in the world. CKD is the 8th leading cause of death in women causing more than 600,000 female deaths a year. Learn more here.

This symposium offers a unique clinical focus with educational content appropriate for all levels of practice. Join us in Berlin to earn up to 25 continuing education (CE) hours at education sessions with both pre- and posttransplant focuses. Network with transplant professionals from around the world and share best practices to help improve patient care. Visit ITNS.org/EuropeanSymposium to view the schedule and full session descriptions. Register 5 nurses and get the 6th registration FREE!

If you are interested in applying for a leadership position with ITNS and becoming a key component in transforming the future of transplant nursing, please click here to learn more. Applications are due Friday, April 13, 2018 by 5 p.m. CT.

Infectious Disease AdvisorPrior to the introduction of effective prophylactic therapy, liver transplantation in patients infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV) resulted in high rates of viral recurrence, allograft loss, and mortality. One retrospective study found the risk of HBV recurrence to be as high as 75% in liver transplant patients who were not given immunoprophylaxis.READ MORE

HealthData ManagementFor three years, Carolinas Healthcare System worked on optimizing clinical documentation among the nursing staff.
How comprehensive was the final result? “We removed 18 million clicks out of the documentation workflow,” says Becky Fox, chief nursing informatics officer.
The organization knew such an effort could make tasks significantly easier for nurses. One team looked for duplicate documentations and cleaned them up, while another team worked with clinical nurses and subject matter experts on creating new workflows. In all, 50 experts and several hundred nurses participated.READ MORE

HealioChimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy may have a synergistic role with hematopoietic stem cell transplantation to improve leukemia-free survival without an increased risk for severe graft-versus-host disease among patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, according to study results presented at the BMT Tandem Meetings.
Although chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has shown great promise for hematologic malignancies, its responses are not durable for all patients, and antigen-negative escape has been increasingly recognized as a concern.READ MORE

Cook Children's“Oh, I can’t do that. I don’t have enough experience.”
I remember uttering these words to my nurse manager after she encouraged me to pursue an open position as a clinical nurse educator. This came after I requested a meeting with her during a time that I was trying to navigate a period of restlessness, eagerness to contribute to my unit, while simultaneously experiencing a feeling of career confusion.READ MORE

Medical XpressResearchers from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI), University of Melbourne and Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) in The Netherlands have made an important step towards making human kidneys from stem cells that they one day hope can be used to treat kidney disease. The research is part of a regenerative medicine project in which human stem cells are used to develop kidneys with functioning tissue as an alternative for renal replacement. READ MORE

Advance Healthcare NetworkLooking back, it shouldn’t have been too hard to foresee the ubiquity of social media. Once believed to be “just for college students,” now everyone from your little brother to Grandma has a Facebook account, Instagram page, or Snapchat — sometimes all three.
Naturally, this trend has made its way into the workplace, with consequences ranging from harmless to potentially devastating. Ten years ago, when starting out with social media co-workers were among the first people we would “friend.” In 2018, with so much more known about the wide-reaching ramification of these channels, this practice deserves a closer look.READ MORE

HealioPatients who received text message intervention regarding alcohol use after liver transplantation had better treatment outcomes than those who received standard care, and they reported high satisfaction with the intervention, according to a recently published study.
“Survival rates of patients who resume excessive drinking posttransplant are significantly lower than those of abstinent patients or patients who have a minor lapse post-transplant,” Kelly S. DeMartini, MD, of Yale University School of Medicine, Psychiatry, and colleagues wrote. READ MORE

Oncology Nurse AdvisorClinical nurse specialist (CNS) involvement in orientation and on-boarding programs in high-risk settings such as the operating room (OR) can improve nurses' clinical preparation, job satisfaction, and staff retention, according to an oral presentation at the National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists (NACNS) 2018 Annual Conference.READ MORE

HealthDay News via U.S. News & World Report In what could be a breakthrough in the world of organ transplants, Johns Hopkins researchers have taken kidneys from people infected with hepatitis C and safely transplanted them without transmitting the disease.
The surgeries gave new kidneys to 10 donor recipients — just a handful of the more than 420,000 Americans who currently struggle with potentially fatal end-stage kidney disease.
READ MORE